By Nancy Plum

Princeton University Summer Chamber Concerts concluded its 59th season this past weekend with a performance by the Katarina String Quartet on Sunday afternoon at Richardson Auditorium. The New York-based ensemble, recently Graduate Resident String Quartet at The Juilliard School and currently Quartet in Residence at New England Conservatory, presented a program featuring audience favorites by Franz Schubert and Robert Schumann, as well as music by the more contemporary Anton Webern and Greek composer Konstantia Gourzi.

Schubert’s 1820 String Quartet No. 12 in C Minor (“Quartettsatz”) was incomplete, stopping half-way through a slow movement. The musicians of the Katarina String Quartet — violinists Jeanel Liang and Jérôme Chiasson, violist Celia Morin and cellist Maya Enstad — played only the completed first “Allegro.” With shimmering violins from the outset, the Quartet exhibited incredible control over musical dynamics. In the Quartet’s hands, this work, as well as the other selections on the program, was a study in intensity and passion.

Webern’s 1909 Five Movements for String Quartet represented the composer’s journey into the world of atonality. The first movement “Heftig bewegt” required the players to use such unusual playing techniques as striking the strings with the wood of the bow and bowing near the bridge amid diverse instrumental colors. This ferocious movement showed especially forceful passages from violist Morin and cellist Enstad, with Enstad always expressive. Enstad also provided particularly rich cello lines in the final movement. The Webern work demonstrated the Quartet’s remarkable ability to control dynamics, at times playing so softly one had to lean in to hear.

Part of a series of compositions dedicated to angels, Gourzi’s Anájikon, the Angel in the Blue Garden was inspired by angels in both paintings and sculptures and creates a spiritual connection between artwork and the music. Anájikon itself was one of a collection of sculptures by German artist Alexander Polzin. To Gourzi, everything in the imagined garden was blue, a color which to the composer had a strong spiritual identity on its own. There was a great deal of trilogy in Anájikon — three movements, and the third movement further broken down into three sections.

The music of Anájikon was appealing and accessible, with the opening “The Blue Rose” homophonic and reverent. First violinist Liang carried the hymnlike tune, complemented by lush viola and cello accompaniment and a counter melody from second violinist Chiasson. Chiasson began an equally lyrical melodic line in the following “The Blue Moon,” initiating a musical conversation in which the Quartet generated suspense through a wide range of dynamics.

The third movement, “The Blue Moon,” depicted the sides of the moon through the timbres of the music. The three subsections represent the light side of the moon, the turning and the dark side. Over a pulsating cello and feathery second violin and viola, first violinist Liang played a plaintive melody, later in duet with Chiasson. The music of this piece was marked by numerous silences, with the final bars suggesting a new beginning.

Katarina String Quartet ended Sunday’s program with a work in which the musicians could musically cut loose. A gift to his wife Clara, Schumann’s String Quartet No. 1 dates from the composer’s “chamber year” of 1842-43. The four movements opened with introductory melodic material passed down the row of the Katarina players. Harmonically rich, the movement featured a smooth transition to the subsequent “Allegro,” with very quick finger work by all, and especially from cellist Enstad.

A galloping “Scherzo” led by Liang showed unison rhythmic motives, and the third movement, a love song to Clara, included long and lyrical melodic lines from all four instrumentalists. The final “Presto,” full of well-defined and complex counterpoint, required precise rhythms and fast playing, extending to the upper reaches of Liang’s first violin register. Following an elegant middle section, the Katarina Quartet brought the piece and concert to a close in a whirlwind and flurry of joy.